The stock market is taking a pummeling and many computer makers are feeling the pinch. Dell has been unable to hit its projected earnings due to a soft market while HP maintains it can meet quarterly projections. Apple has kept mum on the state of the economy and has turned significant profit growth for its latest quarter.

Yesterday, Apple reported its financials for Q4 fiscal 2008 that ended on September 27. Apple posted revenue of $7.9 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion or $1.26 per diluted share. Comparing those numbers to the same period in 2007 when Apple reported revenue of $6.22 billion and a profit of $904 million for the quarter shows significant growth.

Apple's gross margin for Q4 2008 was 34.7%, up from 33.6% in 2007. After removing cost of goods for iPhone and Apple TV over the products economic lives, adjusted sales for the quarter are $11.68 billion and adjusted income is $2.44 billion.

Apple says that it shipped 2,611,000 Mac computers during the quarter for a 21% growth in shipments over 2007. Cupertino says that it sold 11,052,000 iPods during Q4, which is an 8% growth compared to 2007. IPhone sales over Q4 are 6,892,000 compared to 1,119,000 in Q4 2007. That is a massive growth that can be attributed to the increased desirability of the iPhone 3G over the original iPhone.

Apple is now ahead of Smartphone maker RIM in units sold. Steve Jobs said in a statement, "Apple just reported one of the best quarters in its history, with a spectacular performance by the iPhone—we sold more phones than RIM. We don’t yet know how this economic downturn will affect Apple. But we’re armed with the strongest product line in our history, the most talented employees and the best customers in our industry. And $25 billion of cash safely in the bank with zero debt.”

DailyTech reported in late September that Apple held 20% of the PC market in America. Apple says that 41% of its sales for Q4 came from international sales.

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quote: . It is deceptive, though as it makes it sound like ALL PCs have viruses and Macs are super secure and have none.

You know, as a teacher when I gave out homework to be done on a computer, I'd get at least 30% or so saying that their computer weren't working all that well, were broken, or were about to be fixed due to viruses on machines running XP. Feeling secure online with a Mac is the biggest incentive to change teams. If those folks want to play a game, usually they buy a Nintendo or some other less popular gaming TV box. Businesses, who want to be able to count on their computers, are also wooed by the fact that an Apple out of the box usually runs better than a PC out of the box. Now, I have a PC, won't be going Mac at least until the PC is on the verge of extinction. I haven't had a virus since around 2002. I'm no computer guru, but I've devoted a fair amount of time to understanding how to protect my machine from them, which is something technophobes are repulsed from.

Jobs is a genius, there's no doubt about that. He took a flailing company and is quickly turning it into competition for the biggest computer distributors, the most popular portable media player, and their phone business is rocking as well. They're missing out on the netbook revolution that ASUS began, but surely that's temporary.

OS X is arguably the most insecure OS to ever be allowed to attach to the internet. In every SANS vulnerabilities list released, there are unpatched, un-acknowledged holes all over the place. Apple never really acknowledges a hole, but sometimes in their next patch that flaw just 'might' disappear. Patch notes? Huh? You don't need to know, trust Apple. Then they sell the end user a patch rollup, and call it an upgrade. Upgrade notes? Marketing spiel...

Is MS perfect? No, of course not. But when a flaw is found, they at least acknowledge it, and will include the patch in their next SCHEDULED update. With detailed notes, BTW... If the flaw is harmful enough, they'll release an out of cycle patch.

Properly installed/used, MS is pretty secure.

Apple depends on 'security through obscurity', and also the fact that their users are even more clueless about their OS than MS's users...

Vista, imo, is the most secure OS I've used since Windows 2000. But seriously, when XP came out and for awhile after that, unless you did your duty in getting 3rd party fills, you were like Scully walking through a long-term prison facility. You were a walking advertisement for abuse.

Don't get me wrong, XP was a great OS, but out of the box it was a beacon for predators.

But, maybe I really would have to buy a Mac to become intimate with its defects.

The only reason Mac is free of viruses is that no one gets Mac to do programming, so there's no one out there to write viruses... yet.

For me, that is as saying "I'm safe on the streets not because my car has 6 airbags and 5-stars in crash test, but because I'm driving carefully". That is true for only as long as everyone else is driving carefully (which is what we have in the land of Mac now). But as soon as some people stop driving carefully, you learn you're not safe at all.

As the Mac's market share and profile grow, programmers will start emerging. Hackers will start emerging. Mac is like a candy store with doors wide open and store owner on the lunch break; sooner or later, someone wise kid, with no real games to play with on Mac, will decide to "educate" himself in the art of virus making for fun. It is just in humans' nature.

As long as Macs cost just a little bit more than PCs, they will maintain their niche status... even if the niche grows to 20%. And as long as they cost more and maintain a niche status, virus writers have no incentive to write to them.

And as long as that is true, then viruses will be few and far between. Eventually Macs will drop in price to the point that even virus writers will buy them... but that will probably be 10 years from now when a Mac costs $120 and a PC costs $100...